New South Korean President Lee Myung-bak called for better relations with former colonial ruler Japan yesterday, saying his nation should look to the future instead of dwelling too much on the past.
Lee's address, made at a ceremony marking Korea's 1919 uprising for independence, contrasted with speeches his predecessor Roh Moo-hyun gave on the holiday in recent years, in which he criticized Tokyo for not living up to its repeated apologies.
Lee's speech included no criticism of Japan and no demand for a new apology.
PHOTO: AFP
"South Korea and Japan should build a future-oriented relationship in a pragmatic attitude," Lee said in the nationally televised address. "We should never look away from the truth of history. However, we cannot give up on future relations, bound by the past forever."
On March 1, 1919, hundreds of thousands of Koreans rose up against Japan and demanded independence. Hundreds of people were killed or wounded. The uprising is commemorated in both Koreas, although the anniversary is not a national holiday in the North.
Lee, who assumed office on Monday, has said since his December election that improving relations with the US and Japan would be one of his foreign policy priorities, saying ties with the two countries had frayed under his predecessor.
On the day of his inauguration, Lee held a summit with Japanese Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda and agreed to hold regular summits with Japan and consider reviving talks to tear down trade barriers between the two nations.
South Korea and Japan are key trade partners but have sparred over rows stemming largely from Japan's 1910 to 1945 colonial rule of Korea, including repeated visits by Japanese leaders to a war shrine that critics say glorifies the country's wartime atrocities.
Korea was liberated in 1945, at the end of World War II, and was then divided into two. Lee said the division is not only a matter between the two Koreas, but also the international community.
"We cannot resolve the South-North question with exclusive nationalism," he said. "We should view it as an internal issue, but at the same time as an international issue as well."
North Korea has long called for Seoul and Pyongyang to resolve the problems on the Korean peninsula alone, and the North's state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper reiterated that sentiment yesterday in an editorial marking the uprising anniversary.
"We should never allow any foreign force to intervene" in efforts to unify the peninsula, it said in a report carried by the North's Korean Central News Agency.
Lee, who took office with a promise to boost the economy, also emphasized that South Korea should be forward-looking and pragmatic amid stiff international competition.
"We have too many things to do to remain looking back," he said.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RSS